I require your wisdom. The other day I had a good idea for a website. In fact, I’d call it a really good idea. I sat around pondering for a little while, the idea grew and grew, and eventually I got so excited that I gave myself barfy feelings. So, here’s this nifty, happy, exciting-to-the-brink-of-yakking idea. The problem is, I have very little (if any) notion of where to go from here.

I do have a couple of friends that I would love to bring on board if they have the time and interest, and I’m by no means suffering from computer/web-related illiteracy. Here are the things I lack: 1) knowledge of web design, 2) any experience with site management, and 3) bling.

I want to know how, Sars. How did you do it? Okay, I understand that you can’t spend the rest of your day explaining step-by-step the process of starting your own website. I guess I’m looking for pointers. I understand that I need to keep things simple; the site’ll probably suck at first. I also know that I need to do some serious learnin’. Aside from patience and perseverance, are there any hints you have? Advice? Anything? Bueller?

Thank you,
Website Wanna-have

My cat pees all over the apartment. He has FLUTD — basically, crystals in his
litter. I know it’s not his fault.

The peeing, though, Sars, the peeing. I can’t stand it. I really cannot deal
with it healthily. I get so so angry and I feel so helpless and I cry and I
want to flashback to my mom and “Can’t I have nice things?” I can’t have people
over because of the smell. Yeah, there are cleaners, but he pees faster than it
dries. My house is gross, I never go around barefoot anymore because it’s just
nasty. I’ve put litter boxes around the house to help him out when he has to go
and can’t make it, but this isn’t that effective and god, it still smells.

The smell is so nasty and pervasive and I just can’t deal. I can get myself out
of the house to deal with my initial reaction, but I just don’t know what to do
or say to myself to resolve my anger and sadness. I can’t show my anger in even
the most generalized way, because of his background. I suspect he was a very
abused cat before he was a stray (he was two or three when I found him). Building trust
took a long time, but now he just adores me. Follows me around, comes when I
call him, goes to sleep when I do, just generally very dependent. He gets
abnormally frightened when I am angry, to the extent that one time he wet
himself. I don’t take my anger out on him, and I would never hurt him, but just
me crying and muttering is scary for him.

He’s on a diet and a different type of food. The vet sees no need for surgery.
I have to find a way to deal with this situation. Any suggestions?

I know, incidentally, that this is one reason I shouldn’t have children. I
definitely will not. I wouldn’t even have the cat if it weren’t for the fact
that he was returned from two households I tried to place him in after he
healed. The reason I picked him off the street in the first place was because
he was clearly in a lot of pain and needed vet care asap. Placing him now isn’t
an option — he’s a peeing four-year-old black male cat. No one would want him,
except me. I just need a way to deal with the situation.

I do love him, in case that doesn’t come across in this email.

Sincerely,
Nobody visits

I have a problem (duh) and it involves a boy (duh).
I work as a clerk at a vintage clothing store. The pay
kind of sucks, but we get first dibs on new stuff and
there is like no dress code.

There is also another huge…perk. I
have the cutest, smartest, sweetest, funniest, nicest
co-worker in the entire world. We can spend hours
talking about anything and nothing. We get each
other’s jokes and sense of humor. We are totally
compatible.

He, of course, is in a totally committed relationship.
To make things worse, his girlfriend is totally sweet
and fun. Bitch.

I know you get a lot of “I have a crush — help me get
rid of him” letters, but in a lot of those you
advocate minimizing time spent with the crush. I can’t
do that. I cannot quit this job, and I really don’t
want to lose this guy, even if it’s as a hands-off
friend. In the meantime, I’ve worked here a month and
I still get totally aroused just talking to this guy
on the phone (sorry to share that with you, but you
see how serious I am?).

Is there any way to speed this
up? I normally don’t crush quite like this, so I’m a
little out of my league here. Any help would be
appreciated, even if it’s just a smack to the head.

Thanks,
Crushing Hard

Why does alcohol always get me into trouble? My current scrape is
minor, comparatively, but nonetheless, here I am again, this time
asking your advice.

Recently, I headed over to my local
haunt, the infamous Five Fingers, and sat down to a drink served by their
new bartender Ginny, and she introduces
me to her friend, an unemployed architect who wants to be a writer.
We bullshit about writing for a couple drinks, then he spills that he’s
just finished a novel.

What do I do?
I offer to read it. Yep. Oh, I add this insult to the injury: I say
I’ll read it, but only if he wants commentary. Someday I may hope to
figure out what the fuck I was thinking, but not today.

He emails it the next day, and you can probably guess the rest.

It’s abysmally bad. Like, “wow!” bad. No cohesion, metaphors that a
crowbar wouldn’t help, characters I hate, the whole shebang. And this
is the first page. I’m not kidding.

Obviously my question is this: What’s my obligation here? The honorable man in me says suck it up. Read 20 pages, give detailed notes on your problems with
its structure, and try and find something good to say.
The guy with no time says ignore it, what are the odds you’ll see him again.

In no case will I lie and say it’s okay. Any thoughts?

The Reader

There’s this woman that works at the local bodega (the tomatoes are feh). She’s not a regular employee — I only see her there about once a month, but we always hit it right off. She’s friendly, literate, funny, and cute. Now, I harbor no illusions about whether clerk types are actually flirting with me just because they’re being hospitable. And, because I’m a big scaredy-cat and also because I don’t want to make her uncomfortable, I had always shied away from pressing forth into actual conversations or even introducing myself.

So I just figured I’d be relegated to our little banter-while-she-rings-me-up thing, and that’d be fine. But this seems different. She always seems genuinely glad to see me. But the last time I saw her, which was a few weeks ago, and was about a month after the previous time I’d seen her, she was, like, overjoyed to see me. She was all “you’ve got to come here more often” and “we don’t spend enough time together” and the like. Now, I call that flirtatious verbage. She introduced herself and we shook hands, and then we had a lovely chat about what we do, where we went to school, et cetera. I decided I should make some kind of move, so I…gave her a business card.

In retrospect, I think that’s a pretty lame thing to do in any social situation, or at least in THIS situation. But we were talking about what we do, and her with the spending more time together and what-all, so I used the segue: the business card indicates what I do (graphic design, and it’s got my website on there and everything), and it also has my contact info. I don’t remember exactly what I said as I gave it to her, but something along the lines of “give me a call if you want to hang out, go skeet-shooting, whatever,” which got a giggle.

And that was that. It was a few weeks ago. Now, I’m almost entirely 100% positively sure that I made it clear that I liked her and hoped she would call. Except maybe I didn’t, because I didn’t SAY that exactly, and I gave her a business card instead of writing my number on a piece of paper. She didn’t offer her number in return. Oh, one more thing: as I was walking out the door, she said something to me that I couldn’t hear and I didn’t ask her to repeat it. I just smiled and waved and continued to exit the store, feeling that I could only make things worse by hanging around at that point.

So now I’m left hanging. I could ask more directly the next time I see her, but I don’t know when that will be. I could ask one of the other clerks (I’m friendly with them all) when she’ll work next, but my fear is that that would be stalky, or make THEM uncomfortable. I certainly wouldn’t expect any of them to give me contact info (I wouldn’t even want to procure it that way) but I would like to know when I might run into her again.

So. What’re you’re thoughts? Did I make it clear enough that she would have followed up if she wanted to, so I should just forget it? Or did she express interest and I didn’t step up properly, and I should pursue this further?

Baffled In Brooklyn